Beauty Begins: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

by Chris Shook and Megan Shook Alpha

“Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.” 1 Corinthians 13:12a (NLT)

We were made to look in the mirror. We’ve just been looking in the wrong mirrors. We were made to look in the mirror of Christ’s love to see our sacred reflections. But, as 1 Corinthians 13:12 says, we look in a lot of poor mirrors here on earth that give us a distorted view.

The Mirror of Our Parents

The first mirror we look in is the mirror of our parent’s eyes. Children’s first concept of who they are comes from looking into the eyes of their parents and seeing what is reflected back to them. If you looked into the eyes of a parent and saw value, love, and beauty reflected back to you, then chances are you grew up feeling valued and beautiful. But, if you looked into a parent’s eyes and saw stress, anxiety, and distraction reflected back, then you probably grew up feeling insecure. If you constantly saw a critical look from a parent, then it’s likely you feel as if you don’t measure up. Even with the best of parents, there is some distortion in their mirrors, because there are no perfect parents.

The Mirror of Peers

As a young girl moves into teen years, the mirror of her parents is often replaced by the mirror of peers. When she looks in that mirror, she may see reflected back one of two extremes – “I hate myself” or “I love myself too much.” You get it. Who of us hasn’t measured ourselves by our peers? But it’s unfair to compare. You wind up either putting yourself down or putting others down to feel as if you aren’t worthless. Neither of these approaches is the right way to think about ourselves, but trying to change our thought process and our sense of self-worth is incredibly hard. It can only begin when we stop looking in all the distorted mirrors and instead look into the only mirror that matters, God’s.

The Mirror that Matters

The only mirror that matters is God’s, which is easier said than believed and lived out, but it’s true. When we look in the mirror of Christ’s love, we discover our sacred reflections, and we see mirrored back complete love, beauty, and acceptance. His love for you is complete and unconditional. There is nothing you can do to make God love you any more or any less than He does right now. He can’t love you more than He already does because He loves you perfectly and completely! We need to stop looking in the mirror of culture, the mirror of parents and the mirror of peers. We have to start looking in the only mirror where we’ll find our sacred reflections. When you look into the eyes of Christ, you’ll see reflected back beauty, worth, love and meaning. Once you get a glimpse of your sacred reflection, you will start to reflect the beauty of Christ to others.